The Faithful Page 3

  And there it was! Twenty feet ahead, the bathroom sign beckoned him to safety. Moaning with relief, he crashed through the door and barricaded himself in the only stall.

  Some time later Sumner emerged, unsteady and bathed in sweat. His belly was still rumbling threats. Placing his satchel on the counter, he splashed cold water on his face and neck, soaking the front of his T-shirt. He scooped several handfuls into his mouth, washing away the bitter taste of bile and booze.

  His temples were pounding in time with his heartbeat, but the cool water flowing over his wrists calmed him. Eventually, he turned off the tap and scrubbed his face with a rough paper towel.

  After a nervous glance in the smudged mirror, he let out a shaky breath. He was alone. There were no silent grinners, no bloodied soldiers, and none of his bogeys.

  Good. That was good. His bowels unclenched a bit.

  Sumner felt like he had aged twenty years in the six months since that letter in his mailbox had started his awakening. But the man in the mirror was still in his prime. Well, almost. His sandy hair had more silver and some weight had dropped off his already-slender frame. His clothes would soon be hanging on him. He’d always considered his eyes to be his best feature, with their intense, crystal-blue clarity. But at the moment, they were bloodshot and bruised-looking.

  You’re starting to look like a corpse, he thought. Walking Dead, eat your heart out.

  And, right on cue, his ears started ringing. A bogey was approaching. His teeth clenched convulsively.

  Dammit, not now!

  It was a familiar spirit, too. He could feel it. Was it Coach? Or Loretta? Or worst of all, Soapy?

  “Not now!” Sumner growled.

  It was Soapy, he was sure of it. Soapy, with his oily counsel and intrusive good cheer. Soapy was trouble, and Sumner already had that in spades. But the ringing grew louder, drowning out any other noise. His bogeys could not be stopped. Sumner curled over the sink, groaning and clutching at his ears. The noise was bad, but Soapy’s caved-in grin and beetle eyes would be way worse.

  “No! Not now!”

  And then a miracle happened. Soapy disappeared. He didn’t fade away, or ease back into the blackness from which he had come. Poof! He was simply gone. Sumner blinked, letting his hands drop as he processed the inexplicable, deafening silence.

  “Dude, you okay?”

  Sumner screamed like a fifties housewife who had just discovered a dead mouse in the flour canister. The teenage boy near the hand dryer screamed with him, showing off a mouth full of metal. Something about that flash of braces made Sumner realize the kid was real. He was wearing a Denver Broncos hat and his skin was pink and pimpled. Sumner couldn’t help but stare. The boy was perfect in his gawky, storklike pre-manhood. He was gloriously alive.

  But for how long?

  That thought pushed Sumner over the precipice upon which he’d been teetering, and into a decision. His shoulders squared and his stomach unclenched. The boy was frozen against the garbage bin, probably scared that any movement might set the crazy dude off into a murderous rampage. Sumner was equally scared. Not of the boy, of course, but of what he was about to do. After all, it was likely to get him killed.

  “Sorry,” Sumner muttered. Grabbing his satchel, he moved around the boy, giving him the widest berth possible. He could almost hear the kid’s sigh of relief as the door closed between them.

  With renewed urgency, Sumner entered the main part of the airport. He spied a UPS drop box thirty feet away and moved toward it.

  Keeping his gait loose and his eyes straight ahead, he surreptitiously scanned the people around him. They would be nearby, but for the moment he couldn’t spot them. He was feverishly hoping to avoid their scrutiny for the next couple of minutes.

  Along with a Bic pen, Sumner slid the envelope out of his satchel. His hands were shaking as he found the appropriate label and filled out the address and payment information. As he stuck the label to the envelope and watched it drop out of sight, the noose tightened around his neck.

  He spotted her on his way to the Hertz counter. She was sipping from a takeout coffee cup at a two-person table beside the Peaks Cafe. Blonde and voluptuous, tight with youth, she had tanned legs that took an impossibly long journey from the edge of her frayed denim skirt to the rims of her high-heeled cowboy boots.

  Her cowgirl-gone-whore ensemble was attracting plenty of notice, but she seemed immune to the ogling of the barista behind the counter and to the suits who hovered hopefully around her. Her gaze was fixed on Sumner, but he doubted she’d fallen victim to his animal magnetism. Unless she had daddy issues, which, come to think of it, she probably did.

  There was no mistaking her. Even dressed in the uniform of American youth—it was like the entire generation was experiencing a critical fabric shortage—to Sumner she might as well have had I Fidele stamped on her forehead.

  He took a deep breath. All right, he thought. Game on, cowgirl.

  Doing his best to ignore her surveillance, Sumner moved casually toward the Hertz sign. At the same time, he took stock of his mental defenses and bricked up the imaginary wall inside his head. The last thing he needed was her picking up on his thoughts. That would be a death sentence.

  There were no customers at the kiosk, and he was served immediately. He chose a Ford Edge for its four-wheel-drive capabilities, paying the extra for it without a second thought. October in the mountain passes was unpredictable.

  Grabbing the keys, he managed to laugh almost naturally at a joke the attendant made, and left the counter.

  A casual whistle as he walked by her. She was standing at a tourist rack, feigning interest in a brochure on trail riding. He passed so close he could smell her skin, an intoxicating mix of soap and musk.

  She was green and wide open, and it was impossible to resist a small peek, despite the risk. He picked up her name—Ora—and a few other tidbits. Most interesting was her preference for female companionship. That almost stopped him in his tracks.

  I Fidele Doctrine preached against homosexuality. It was considered an abomination, a strict bit of religious philosophy Sumner figured was actually based on pragmatism; those unwilling to reproduce weren’t of much use for populating the New World.

  But if she was so easy for him to read, how had she hidden her sexuality from the Fathers? It seemed impossible, since he had effortlessly snatched that little nugget from her defenseless mind. He was under no illusion about his limitations.

  With some effort, he avoided her gaze and made his way to the glass exit doors and the parking lot beyond. She followed too closely behind him, and he repressed a nervous laugh. She may have been smoking hot, but she made a terrible secret agent.

  She watched him from the other side of the glass doors as he drove out of the parking lot. He tightened his grip on the wheel, fighting the urge to give her a cheerful wave as he passed, or maybe flip her the bird. As he moved toward the exit, he congratulated himself on a brief moment of self-control.

  The Ford Edge had less than a hundred miles on it, and it drove like a solid, boxy dream. He fiddled with the satellite radio until he found the E Street station. Springsteen’s bravado washed over him—damn, that dude could rock!—and he cracked the window so the crisp fall breeze could tickle his face. “Thunder Road” was playing, and Sumner joined in at full volume.

  He caught the grin on his face in the wing mirror. It erased at least a decade. If today were the last day of his miserable life, at least he was going into battle with The Boss by his side.

  “Bring it!” he shouted into the wind, feeling young and strong and alive for the first time in forever.

  But his rush of confidence was short-lived. By the time he reached the town of Encampment, Sumner was filled with quiet dread. The dark fingers of I Fidele were scrabbling at him, trying to hook in their claws and reel him in. It would take another hour and a quarter
to reach The Ranch, and dusk would be setting in.

  Like a kid afraid of the dark, he was overwhelmed with fear at the notion of being stuck at The Ranch overnight. He was kicking himself for his lack of foresight. An earlier flight could have delivered him to The Ranch in the early afternoon, giving him a chance to get out of there before nightfall.

  He briefly fantasized about finding a hotel in Encampment. About ensconcing himself in hotel blankets, six-pack at his side, the room dark, save the flicker of the TV. He would lose himself in a cult classic on Turner Classic Movies, or maybe he would escape into John Wayne’s swagger in True Grit or McLintock! The Duke was never afraid of anything.

  But the weather was fair and dry. The forest road that led to The Ranch would be clear. It would do no good to delay. Other than living to see another sunrise, which would be nice. His best chance of survival was to follow orders. And pray that cowgirl hadn’t seen him put that letter in the drop box.

  There was a Conoco on Sixth Street, and Sumner stopped to fill up the Ford. While it was filling, he went inside to use the facilities and buy a huge cup of bitter coffee, to which he added four creamers and three sugar packets. He glanced longingly at the Coors on display in the fridge, but drinking was considered a weakness at I Fidele. There had been plenty of weakness in the last six months. Perhaps it was best if he didn’t show up with beer on his breath.

  He paid cash for the gas and coffee and climbed back into the SUV. Route 70 cut west through the grasslands of southern Wyoming before hacking an endless, rugged path through the Routt National Forest. It was the perfect place to disappear into the wilderness of another time, especially since Route 70 was closed during winter months.

  Six miles past Encampment, he slowed for the turnoff onto Forest Service Road 550, a gravel lane that cut south and west into the belly of the forest. Sumner gritted his teeth and slowed to a crawl.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  As soon as Sumner was out of sight, Ora pulled her iPhone out of the back pocket of her skirt and punched in the code to unlock it. She pressed the next numbers from memory; there were no contacts stored in her phone.

  Father Narda answered, his voice gravelly, before the first ring was complete.

  “He’s on his way. Driving a gray Ford Edge,” she said, dumping her tepid coffee in a bin by the automatic door.

  “How does he look?”

  “Like shit. Like he hasn’t slept in six months.”

  “Do you think he’s fighting against his programming?”

  “How should I know? He came off the plane like his ass was on fire. Went straight to the john. He was in there for almost twenty minutes.”

  “And then?”

  “And then nothing. He came out looking like a man who’d just dropped a huge load. He rented a car and took off.”

  “Hmm.” His voice was so rough she could feel its vibration, and she instinctively pulled her ear away from her phone.

  “Do you think he made you?”

  Ora snorted. “Are you crazy?”

  Well, it wasn’t really a lie, just not a direct answer. Sumner most certainly had made her, just as she intended. But her dad didn’t need to know that.

  “Okay.” The line went dead. No thank you, no good-bye.

  “Where’s the love, fucker?” she muttered, deleting the call history and tucking the phone into her back pocket. She reached into her cleavage, glaring at the trucker who slowed to catch a glimpse, and pulled out a prepaid Samsung. As it powered up, she moved back to the Peaks Cafe.

  “Hey, it’s me. I’m on my way back. I’ve just got to lift a letter out of a UPS drop box.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Who’d you have to sleep with to make senior special agent?” Special Agent Carl Robertson’s voice was crackling before Josh even had the phone to his ear.

  “Your mother,” Josh retorted. No different from in the schoolyard, there was unwritten FBI protocol to follow: when in doubt, always insult a fellow agent’s mother. Josh waded through the necessary banter and then asked, “What can I do for you, Carl?”

  “Think I’ve got another one for your collection,” Carl said, his tone turning serious.

  “Oh yeah? What’s the story?” Josh sat up and grabbed a pen out of the FBI coffee mug on his desk.

  “Nine-year-old boy in Clatsop County, Oregon. He went missing from a cyclo-cross competition on the county fairgrounds.”

  “What in the world is that?”

  “Some kind of bike competition. Anyway, he wasn’t competing; he was there watching with his dad. Dad says he went to get a hot dog and disappeared into thin air. That was four days ago.”

  “And the dad?”

  “I met him today. I doubt he’s involved. He’s a drunk, but with reason. Wife committed suicide last Valentine’s Day. His son is all he’s got left.”

  “What makes you think it’s one of mine?”

  “Remember that Kerry case a couple years back?”

  Josh swiveled in his chair. They stared back at him. Forever frozen. Forever lost. Forever pinned to his mural of tears. Some of the photos were almost fifty years old, curled at the edges with age. The most recent was from four months ago.

  Josh scanned the photos until he found her, low down on the left. Jessica Kerry, a six-year-old who was snatched from a mall in Portland during the Christmas season almost three years before. She was blonde and freckled, captured with one bottom tooth missing.

  There were exactly 778 photos on the wall, and Josh knew each one by name. It averaged out to fifteen or sixteen new cases a year, although some years there had been almost no disappearances, and other years, like 1998, there had been more than thirty.

  On the surface there was nothing to link the cases, other than the fact that they all disappeared without a trace. The kids were black, white, Hispanic, and Asian. They were from every part of the country and every socioeconomic class.

  On top of that, all the cases were flimsy on evidence. More often than not, there were no witnesses. When someone had seen something, the description of the suspect was always different. One time it was an older white man with silver hair. Next it was an African-American woman in a business suit. Then it was a twentysomething hippie type with dreadlocks who smelled like patchouli and BO. Always different. The suspects were as varied as the kids who went missing.

  Before computers caught up, and before Josh came along with his deep and never-ending personal obsession, law enforcement had never connected the dots between the cases. There were only a few connections, but they were there.

  “Yes, I remember,” Josh confirmed.

  “Well, there was blood found at the scene. We typed it. It’s not human.”

  “Lamb’s blood?”

  “You got it.”

  Josh’s gaze traveled across the wall of faces until he found her. The red hair. The Coke bottle–green eyes. More than two decades later, Ryanne Jervis’s kidnapping still haunted him. “I’ll see you in about five hours.”

  According to Hollywood, FBI agents travel by special jet. In reality, they are subjected to the same traveling schedules and frustrations as the average American citizen. They even fly coach.

  The earliest flight he was able to book was on Alaska Airlines, and it didn’t leave Dulles until 5:10 p.m. With the time change he would get into Portland, Oregon, just before 8:00 p.m. He choked back his frustration and booked the flight online, then called Special Agent Carl Robertson to let him know when he would arrive. Carl offered to pick him up and drive him the hour and a half to Seaside.

  Josh left the office at 2:30 and headed to his Falls Church, Virginia, townhome to pack a bag, take a quick shower, and change his suit. He was back on the road twenty minutes later, and made it to the airport in less than thirty minutes.

  The metal briefcase that held his Glock 22 firearm and ammunition had to be checked, and he wai
ted while it went through the security screening. Once it cleared, the officer handed back the key to the protective case, and Josh found a Starbucks.

  He bought a large coffee and a Washington Post with which to pass the time until boarding, and a blueberry-bran muffin and a fruit-and-cheese platter to take onboard for his dinner.

  The flight was uneventful, but after almost six hours of cramming his six-foot-three frame into a coach seat, he was stiff and fighting a dull headache. Carl met him at baggage claim and led him through the short-term lot to his company-issued Chevy Suburban.

  Josh placed his bags in the trunk and took a minute to load his Glock, which he holstered against his rib cage. Once ensconced in the passenger seat, he asked Carl if there were any new developments in the case.

  “There’s been nothing. The vendor remembers Jack. Says he was alone. Bought a couple of hot dogs and drinks. We found the dogs and the two spilled drinks about fifty feet away, covered in blood. One of the dogs had a bite out of it.”

  Carl paused as he paid the cashier, then pulled through the gate and navigated the twists and turns toward the on-ramp for I-205 South. Once they were on the freeway he pulled a file folder out of the center console and passed it to Josh.

  “It’s all in there, if you want to catch yourself up.”

  Stapled to the inside page was a photo of the boy. Jack Barbetti was a good-looking kid. He had light-brown hair cut close to his head and large, almond-shaped brown eyes. His crooked teeth would require expensive orthodontic work. Smooth-skinned, his cheekbones were just starting to push out with the promise of the man he would become.

  Would have become. Josh felt the familiar ache in his chest. If Jack Barbetti was case number 779, he would never be seen again.

  The Barbetti home was on a small street of clapboard, single-level homes, a block and a half off the beach. It was painted a bright yellow with pale-blue trim, and the yard was artfully appointed with tufts of sea grass and driftwood.